Media Literacy Education: Harnessing the Technological Imaginary

Abstract

An important challenge for media literacy education in the next decade will be to cultivate a commanding voice in the cultural conversation about new and emerging communication media. To really have a stake in the social, economic and educational developments that emerge around new digital media in the U.S. and globally, media literacy educators need to be part of that larger conversation. Put another way, media literacy education is obligated to harness the technological imaginary and steer it in a productive direction. The technological imaginary consists of the myths, attitudes and values that a culture attaches to new technologies, sometimes in terms of their perceived abilities to fix what's wrong with society, and sometimes in terms of their perceived destruction of social cohesion (Lister et al. 2003). Media literacy educators must try to shape the technological imaginary in a reasoned, informed and very public way. This essay discusses the need for media literacy scholars to contribute to public discourse on the potential roles of digital media in contemporary society.